Susan Basnett: 'If pupils want to study the exciting AS subjects listed, they will be disappointed'

Despite claims for joined-up thinking, I can't remember a time when education policy has been less joined up. It seems totally beyond anyone anywhere to try and fit pieces of policy together. Hence, we have a badly needed increase in nursery places, but also expanding class sizes in secondary schools. Or we have the Government launching an initiative to persuade more young people from poorer backgrounds to go to university while presiding over fee increases condemning thousands more students to poverty if they go on to further study. It just doesn't add up.

Despite claims for joined-up thinking, I can't remember a time when education policy has been less joined up. It seems totally beyond anyone anywhere to try and fit pieces of policy together. Hence, we have a badly needed increase in nursery places, but also expanding class sizes in secondary schools. Or we have the Government launching an initiative to persuade more young people from poorer backgrounds to go to university while presiding over fee increases condemning thousands more students to poverty if they go on to further study. It just doesn't add up.

Do the people making these policies ever get together round a table to talk through the implications of the latest quick-fix idea, or do they assume that joined-upness is something that happens by some strange chemical process some-where in the bowels of the system?

Recently, I gave a talk to a headteachers' conference, well briefed (or so I thought) on the interface between schools and universities. I expected questions about the new widening access policy, about the possibility of further fee increases, about the impact of e-technology on universities in the future.

What I got instead was much more basic: tough questioning about how the new A-level system is going to affect university places and how curricula will adjust to the changes. Consulting my detailed briefing notes that barely mentioned this, and recalling meetings at which the message had been along the lines of "let's wait and see, we can't change admissions policies until we've seen how the new system works and whether standards are going to drop again", I tried to explain this position to the heads.

"Are you telling us," said one outspoken woman, "that the universities have not treated this as maximum priority when it is going to affect every child in the UK applying for a place in 2002?" I had to confess that well, actually, we hadn't, because, well, actually, we had been worrying more about the stream of benchmarking documents, Quality Assurance Agency codes of practice, research assessment exercise submissions, periodic reviews, key-skills debates, bidding to funding acronyms and heaven knows what else that pours in an endless flood tide of bureaucratic sewage across our desks every day.

"It's alright for some," said another headteacher sardonically. "You're up there in your ivory towers, but we have to deal with irate parents who want us to explain exactly what's going to happen to their kids."

Last week, I saw it from the other side: my daughter was choosing her A-levels and we went to school to discuss the new system. For from this year, after GCSE, the old A-level system will be divided into two phases. Pupils will take one set of exams in year one to AS-level, another in year 2 if they top up to A-level. In theory it's a great idea, because the aim is to broaden the spread of subjects for sixth-formers to 4 or even 5 AS-levels.

But like so many good ideas around in education in this country, it hasn't been thought through. Teachers and universities were more or less in the dark until late last year about how the new system would work, hence the reluctance of universities to commit themselves to something they really don't know enough about.

In schools, the new system brings serious staffing implications. You don't need a degree (or even a GCSE) to realise that if you want to offer more subject choice, someone has to do the teaching. In some schools, the changes have to be implemented without additional staff due to budget constraints, so if pupils want to study psychology or law or geoscience or any of the exciting AS subjects listed, they are doomed to disappointment.

My daughter is lucky because her school is well staffed and she has a range of choices. But once again, what started out as a good idea hits a reef when the practicalities kick in and seems set to be socially divisive into the bargain.

There's one more problem nobody seems to have thought of: this new system adds yet another tier of exams to children who are now the most heavily examined school population in Europe. From September, this year's post-GCSE hopefuls will start a two-year exam cycle, uncertain how the universities are going to respond to the new qualifications.

Why don't education policy-makers stop talking about joined-up thinking and start doing it instead?

The writer is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the University of Warwick

education@independent.co.uk